American Experience

American Experience is a television program airing on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. The program airs documentaries, many of which have won awards,^[3] about important or interesting events and people in American history.

American Experience
Genre	Television documentary
Created by	Peter McGhee
Theme music composer	Charles Kuskin (1988–2000) Mark Adler (2000–2008) The Chambers Brothers (2009–2010) Joel Goodman (2011–present)
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English (US)
No. of seasons	36
No. of episodes	378 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers	Judy Crichton (1987–1996) Margaret Drain (1997–2003) Mark Samels (2003–2020) Cameo George (2020–present)[1]
Running time	Between 55 minutes and two hours
Production company	WGBH-TV
Original release
Network	PBS[2]
Release	October 4, 1988 (1988-10-04)

The series premiered on October 4, 1988, and was originally titled The American Experience. It was shortened to American Experience during a rebrand and image update. The show has had a presence on the internet since 1995, and more than 100 American Experience programs are accompanied by their own internet websites, which provide background information on the subjects covered as well as teachers' guides and educational companion materials.^[4] The show is produced primarily by WGBH-TV in Boston, Massachusetts, though occasionally in the early seasons it was co-produced by other PBS stations such as WNET (Channel 13) in New York City.

Some programs considered part of the American Experience collection were produced prior to the creation of the series. Vietnam: A Television History was one of them, airing originally in 1983 after taking six years to assemble.^[5] Also, in 2006, American Experience rebroadcast Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, the first half of the 1986 documentary series about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.